Vegan Veg Omelette
Hello! I feel like I have been MIA from this blog for so long. We are now way into January and I had hoped to post before this. I was away in Ireland for the start of January, (it was a great booze fuelled trip, only right for new years.) and since being back I have been fighting the flu. But I'm back, healthy and I have some exciting stuff coming up this year.
Of course January is a special time for Vegans, its Veganuary! The time of year when thousands more people join the vegan cause and restaurants have vegan deals on. Oh yes very special indeed. Whenever I speak to people about going vegan I usually get asked very similar questions, number one of which is "how do you live without..." usually it's cheese or eggs? People usually get that you can easily survive without meat, I mean vegetarianism has been a mainstream diet choice for decades, but cheese and eggs, heaven forbid! To this my answer is usually something along the lines of "there are plenty of good substitutes for these things, and to be honest tastes change surprisingly quickly, I don't really miss anything." But what are these substitutes? Well this recipe involves my favourite cheese substitute, which is like a million times better for you than cheese and I now think way tastier, nutritional yeast! For the eggs I have used gram flour (also known as chickpea flour) and water. Yep that's really all it is. I highly recommend making gram flour a staple in your store cupboard, particularly if you are gluten free, it is endlessly useful.
I used potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and broccoli within my omelette but you can use any left over veg you have left around, this is a great recipe to use up left overs on. I also added chipotle chilli flakes to the mix, if you can't get hold of chipotle chilli just use normal chilli flakes, or ditch the chilli altogether if spice isn't your bag.
A big thankyou to my babe of a friend Divya, who is the creator of the tea towel I used as a back drop in these photos. It is a map of our local park Crystal Palace, and it is beyond beautiful, so many amazing small details. She still has some left if anyone is interested, (calling all my South East London crew) here is her Instagram where you can find more of her fabulous work.
Serves 3-4
Ingredients
200g potatoes
150g brocolli
Half a white onion
3 large garlic cloves
100g cherry tomatoes
18 tablespoons gram flour
300ML tablespoons water
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon chipotle chilli
Pepper and salt (to your taste)
Method
1) Dice the potatoes into small cubes, about 1-2cm thick, and place into a pan of boiling water to parboil. As the potatoes are cut very small this will only take a few minutes. When soft but still firm enough to hold their shape, remove from the water.
2) While the potatoes are cooking cut the broccoli to roughly the same size as the potatoes. Cut the cherry tomatoes, into quarters and dice the onions as finely as possible.
3) Fry the Potatoes in a frying pan until they begin to brown. Add the onion, garlic and broccoli, and fry until all the vegetables have softened and have some colour.
4) In a large bowl place the gram flour and water, whisk until the batter reaches a smooth consistency with no lumps.
5) Add the nutritional yeast, chipotle chilli and salt and pepper to your batter, and mix well.
6) Add the tomatoes, and the fried vegetables to the batter.
7) Heat a little oil in a large flat bottomed frying pan. Pour in the omelette batter.
8) Transfer you omelette from the stove top to a grill oven, cook until the omlette is browned and crispy. This should take roughly 15 minutes but times will vary depending on the strength of your grill.